Happy October! Shorter autumn days make for longer mornings. Cozy up, grab your pumpkin spice latte, and race the slovenly sunrise by reading this autumnal Design Breakfast newsletter. You’ll find thoughts and inspiration on design, language, generative AI, and even a poem.
Meet our curator of the month
Jordi Rocha is a product designer based in Helsinki. But before design, books were his first passion. He entered the design field after studying literature in London and Oxford. These days, a deep-rooted love for words and language undergirds his design work. This makes him particularly excited about the design field’s recent linguistic turn, spurred by the rise of generative AI. In between tasks and in between books, questions about what it means to design with language now populate his mind.
The entire Built for Mars site is worth a read, but the UX bites section provides insights at breakneck speed. Peter Ramsay highlights the small interactions that differentiate working products from working and delightful products. (The irony of linking to yet another newsletter inside a newsletter does not escape me!)
Many generative AI tools out there state their ability to design UI components with the same skill GPT4 writes texts.Yet few tools visualize what this new design method may look like as well as v0.dev. Click on the generated components and scroll through the prompt chains that birthed them. It illustrates a new kind of design process that takes language for its material.
Everyday, AI tools face interrogations of their claim to value, often being characterized as gimmicks. In university, Merve Emre introduced me to the work of Sianne Ngai, who she aptly calls “One of the most original literary scholars at work today.” Ngai’s theory helps us understand what is at stake in judging a technology as a gimmick. We judge something as a gimmick when there is a mismatch between the value it promises and the value it creates. As a designer, understanding the mechanics behind the gimmick allows me to both understand the resistance new solutions frequently encounter and question the claim to value these new solutions make.
Finish your breakfast with a short, 8-line poem by Emily Dickinson, one of the greatest poets to ever live. On the surface, this poem tells about nature’s scarlet turn from summer to autumn. At its core, this poem tells about the necessity to don trinkets – or, gimmicks? – to adapt and survive in changing environments.
I get this question – both politely and impolitely put! – whenever I mention my education in literature. I first got into design through my partner, who did in fact study design. Yet, I argue, learning about the structure of storytelling, aesthetic theories, and even the powers of prosody serve every designer out there well. Hopefully, the links above prove exemplary of this!
How did you come into your current role?
By finding a company (called Futurice) and supervisor not just receptive but also excited about the answer above!
Biggest learning during your career
I’ll squeeze in one (even shorter!) Emily Dickinson poem in here: “In this short Life that only lasts an hour / How much – how little – is within our power”
Join us!
At the heart of our company, we place people first, recognizing that the happiness of our team ultimately leads to the satisfaction of our clients. We are dedicated to nurturing and empowering you on your journey, as our aim is to stand as the definitive platform for your career growth.
